Week 4

I'm still talking to you, in my head, too much, way too much. I think too much, way too much. I know that, the lady that massaged my head told me my skin was very stiff around my skull- a sign of over thinking. I need to think, professionally, so I should stop thinking personally. At least cut it down, but every thought turns into a rant, into a novel and most of the time, I tell it to you. You know so much already. About my family, about philosophy, about my thoughts on humanity, time, society, reality and locality. You is like a thought dump, where I let out all my rants to not say them out loud. 

Это лето было, несомненно, очень насыщенным. Одной из историй этого лета стали мои встречи с человеком, скорнее персонажем, фигурирующим в моей жизни уже несколько месяцев. Человек, первая встреча наедине с которым вывела меня из себя. Я не знаю точно что произошло за последнее время, но мы нашли общий язык.

I find it annoyingly entertaining to see how every missed moment with you, makes me feel irritated. No matter how confident I was in not needing you, when you didn't show up to a class, the 2 hours a week of your presence that I took as granted, the agitation kicked in. I, once again, am thinking of messaging you, I am no longer at peace with the situation and even the prospect of us not actually being all that compatible, doesn't stop me from spiraling into a void of dissatisfaction. But honestly, it is well past time to work it out... nurturing a conversation that was due in June, latest July, does not make it better, things will probably never solve themselves and an opportunity to have this conversation will probably never fall into my hands, unless I initiate it. For the peace of my mind.

Apple city where everything's bananas

I am always uneasy about being back in the place where I was born and spend my very happy childhood in. Most of my memories from the part of my growing that was spent in Almaty are filled with sunshine and happy memories, which I am foremost thankful for to my parents, granddad and aunt and uncle. I know that despite the rays of sunshine and unicorns in my head, the conditions we lived in were far from ideal. Nonetheless, I have always had access to great people, clean air, fresh fruit and nature. As I got older and moved away the fresh fruit became expensive or hard to attain, the air became so so SO dusty and the people mostly stayed or moved closer to me. Coming back to Almaty has always been fascinating, like going into a world with real people and real interactions. Whereas in my everyday life things seemed a lot more slow-paced, with darker dramas and darker moments of happiness, most of the memories, somehow seem to have been under a layer of bitterness. After my first 2 years away, I've realised that I didn't really know how to be around many of my Almaty friends. The first 2 years marked the beginning of the stray in our development paths. I admired my friends in Almaty, but never knew what to do or say and felt very bulky about myself. I felt everything was wrong until many years later I haven't forced myself to socialise with more people as much as possible. Which I have also enjoyed and then I finally learned and understood how to be around them. In other words, I realised that people are people and me is me, so I started bursting out my world everywhere I went no matter what. I guess, maybe, the mentioned bitterness came from the feeling of not feeling free anywhere.

So, as said, it is weird to see that the people who you started life with in the same city are now noticeably different to you in many of their views. It is weird to come back somewhere that will forever be a part of you and not know if you're still a part of it. I know that some of my friends have or will move and we will stay close. I guess for the rest, as I once was told "we should just make the most of our time" and see where it goes next.

Nonetheless, being here is always a source of motivation. Being here always gives me what I'm looking for. Today it's confidence.

Once someone adds you on Facebook you have a designated hour to spend investigating the Facebook profile an additional 10mins (because he definitely won't invest more time in looking at your profile) checking yours to make sure it's fine without seeming creepy or desperate (to yourself ofc, because no one else will ever know).  After that...

Don't look at his profile again.

Don't show it to your friends.

and I know this is obvious, but... Don't look at his ex's Facebook profile!

and even more obvious... Don't try to compare your profile with her's.

Don't privately freak out and burn all bridges every time he writes something that seems cold or takes longer replying to a text... now this I put here, just because I think it should be mentioned. Even though, who am I kidding? There will be more "fuck him!!!" 's and "this is it!" 's and so on. 

If you want to boost your image of what you want from someone listen to a Мачете playlist on YouTube and decide that you're not into this whole uncertain thing and that you deserve a lot more attention and just generally are too good for this. You're a queen. Is all. 

but pleeeease, pleeeease, DON'T remember his ex and feel self-conscious.

On human interaction and irritability aka Poli's Emotional Blueballs

At some point you really got to ask him/her/yourself how much longer will we play these games? Because the reality is: enough has been said, no one is trying to suffocate the other and all the recent steps have been made under the other party's initiation, so what can a girl be blamed for if all she did was respond. 

The Games that People Play has been my bible for a while and I've talked about it too much in verbal conversation, so I do hope the Universe will forgive me for mentioning it yet again. A book written by Erik Bern on Transactional Analysis, for me it was just a psychology book that happened to fall in my hands at the right time. Bern describes human interactions as strokes, or patting, like dog patting. The moment someone initiates a conversation is pat on the head of their conversation partner, so now the pat must be returned and so on and forth. There are different degrees of patting, so that if you ask someone on a date or pick them up from the airport- that's equivalent to 2-3 pats, so the other person is pushed to pay back with the same amount. The moment the amount of pats is outweighed on some side, a pat void is created, a sense of incompleteness which often is cause for irritation and dissatisfaction in a relationship. 

Sometimes something fucked up turns out to be ok, or even good. Sometimes, most miserable emotional states are put under control, almost always, sooner or later, one way or another. Sometimes people you never thought you'd ever communicate with end up being the best company you've had in a very long time. Sometimes you meet people and they just smell of your childhood and make you feel safe, like nothing you say will ever be out of line and nothing can go wrong as long as you follow their advice and just because they said something will happen- it definitely will. Sometimes, you meet people and connect with them fast on an invisible intimate level, you know there will be no speculations, because it is off limits. You genuinely like that person and enjoy every part of their personality no matter how cold, harsh, quirky, or just different from your's it can be. Sometimes you know you're playing with fire, you know you're a step away from slipping and whatever direction you fall, there will be pain. Sometimes you realise that your mutual affection is pleasant but too much to do good, that depending on the presence of this ray of sunshine in your life is comforting, but destructive in the long run.

Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, you meet someone you never thought you'd like. Sometimes you do. Sometimes it seems so natural and real, you lose all control of the process and invest an infinite amount of will power to just be able to finish an assignment. Sometimes, every day spent together is the happiest you've been in years. Sometimes, things take a turn for the better and it's almost hard to accept it as reality. Sometimes you just do. Sometimes things dissolve into nothing. Sometimes you don't know why. Sometimes you're left hanging for days, weeks. Sometimes, you get random, decreasing signs of affection. Sometimes, your efforts to forget are overruled by content-less messages on your phone and the attempts you make to forgive are abandoned by the complete lack of regard for your emotional health and the logical paranoia of the biggest threat of all... "meeting each other in person outside of university hours". Sometimes all of the happiness gets washed out by emotional instability and uncontrollable, illogical emotional pain. Sometimes, all that's left is DUST GRAINS IN SPACE!!!! jk, I mean, nothing.

That's the thing about trust, once it's gone everything loses that light-headed empty-stomached touch. Things that seemed affectionate and flirtatious are now suspiciously friendly or just rehearsed. Once you get somehow hurt you expect a compensation of sort, expecting the other person to understand or just care as uch as you, which in many cases doesn't happen, as overall no-one is that secure in themselves and aware of the impact of their actions. Overthinking is still the mother of all shit, but why should I not take things personally if I feel their effect? Expectating someone to pay more attention to you to balance out for their misjudgment puts that extra strain on your perception of the relationship. Things get screwed up and the continuous miscommunication gives one false hopes and creates distance between people. 

This is one of those moments, when you finally get home again, have a chunk of lab reports to finish. It is 00:00 and you are pretty sure that soon the Gamma and Beta rays in your protocol will turn into rainbows and unicorns. Listening to that particular direction of hipster music that has a strange 70's-odor, tulips next to me. Life around me, but at this hour, in a more quite manner. I wonder how I got here... It's cool, somehow I am currently very content with all of my decisions. And I'll just leave this here for now

Недавно сходила на Ла Ла Лэнд и его просмотр напомнил мне о прекрасной возможности чувствовать. Я плохо помню когда в последний раз такое случалось не во время поездки в другую страну. И вот не знаю, то ли недосып сказывается, то ли очередная после-экзаменацыоная хандра, но вот чувства появляются и почему-то в конце дня желание творить, двигаться, танцевать, общаться, встречать людей, верить, смешивается в жалость самого себя. Ведь это не правильно! Вот может я поступаю неверно не давая себе возможность высказывать свои чувства? Возможно мне психологически необходим тот день в неделе, когда я могу творить и дать волю своим эмоциям- пусть уголь превращается мои психи в что-то глубокосмысленное... ?

Hello, Friend

So apparently I need to make actual notes of things that happened during the day to on one hand not fall into another abyss of self- degradation and, on the other, to learn from my "mistakes".

So dear me, diary, reader, friend,

Today I got out from another sociopathic depression state. Learning points:
1- you let yourself slip into the retarded state after going into a complete panic state at your exercise test.
2- the panic state was caused by the exaggerated importance of the test, which in turn was caused by your lack of knowledge about the grading scheme of the exercises.
3- the grading scheme is a lot more easy going than expected.

Conclusion: always check the grading criteria!

How did you get out of the sociopathic depression state:

¤By doing physics exercises, by attending the exercise class and understanding the exercises.

¤By being very interested in physics and finally understing how much I can do with my new mathematical knowledge and physics.

Finally you asked someone for a reference letter today, for the first time in person, not just "someone" but a one of your teachers and got a positive reply.

Learning points:
Go for it, no matter how cripplingly nervous you are.